The ship used in the film was the condemned French luxury liner SS Ile de France, which played a major role in rescue operations during the 1956 Andrea Doria disaster.

Cliff (Robert Stack) and Laurie Henderson (Dorothy Malone), and their daughter, Jill (Tammy Marihugh), are relocating to Tokyo and decide to sail there on board the ship.

Before Chief Engineer Pringle (Jack Kruschen) can manually open a steam relief valve, a huge explosion rips through the boiler room, the many decks situated above it, and the side of the ship.

Third Officer Osborne believes that the crew should start loading the passengers into the lifeboats, but Captain Robert Adams (George Sanders) is reluctant, as he never lost a ship.

Captain Adams makes an announcement to the passengers to put on their life jackets, and soon after reluctantly orders the crew to begin loading and launching the lifeboats.

Cliff finds a torch and tries to rush back to Laurie with the help of crewman Hank Lawson (Woody Strode), but they still need an acetylene tank.

Captain Adams is looking at his promotion letter to commodore of the line while Laurie holds a piece of a shattered mirror in her hand, contemplating suicide to free Cliff from risking his life to save her.

Cliff personally helps Lawson aboard, in thanks for his devotion to assisting Laurie's rescue, and the narrator concludes with, "This was the death of the steamship Claridon.

[9][10] Its former owners initially attempted to block Stone's rental of it (for $1.5 million),[11] but withdrew their opposition when MGM agreed not to identify it by its original name when publicizing the film.

[12] In his autobiography Straight Shooting, Robert Stack recalled, "No special effects for Andy [Stone]; he actually planned to destroy a liner and photograph the process.

That's the point where the water in the stateroom is rising above Miss Malone's chin and Mr. Stack, Edmond O'Brien and Woody Strode are still working frantically with an acetylene tank to cut her free.

Using as his setting the old condemned liner Ile de France...he has got an extraordinary feeling of the actuality of being aboard a ship, the creeping terror of a disaster, the agony of a great vessel's death.

"[17] The critic for Time called the film "the most violently overstimulating experience of the new year in cinema: an attempt by two shrewd shock merchants, Andrew and Virginia Stone...to give the mass audience a continuous, 91-minute injection of adrenaline.